Mr. Charlie Harary, Are You Willing?

One of the things we love most are underdogs. We love stories where the person who has no chance beats the opponent. When someone had nothing and went on to create a business, the more he had nothing beforehand, the better the story.

But the ultimate question is how this happens. How does an underdog go about successfully triumphing over the opposing team or force?

Every year I take about 200 men to Israel, from every background you can imagine. They have never been to Israel before, and we go together for a week.

At the end of the week, on Friday night, we go to the Kotel to daven. It is an unbelievable experience. I always get in contact with another organization which arranges to bring Israeli soldiers to the Kotel and meet us. Just as we finish davening, thirty soldiers walk in with uniform, and we dance together. It is a great moment for all of us.

One year, the army men showed up, but they were wearing plain clothes. They were commandos and were not dressed in uniform. I could tell instantly that they didn’t have the same effect on my group of guys, given that they didn’t have that Israeli army look. The head leader of the army squad realized that my group wanted to dance with soldiers in their full uniform, and it wouldn’t be happening.

Knowing I was let down, he pulled me aside and said that he would try to “make it up to me” by allowing me the opportunity to talk to one of the heads of the Intelligence Operations in the army. Sending me farther away from the Kotel, I soon stood in front of what was supposedly one of the most well-respected of men in the army.

“Hi, my name is Charlie Harary…” I said. He had no idea who I was. “So, you must be a really brave guy to be in the army your whole life?” “No, I’m not brave at all,” he shot back. Any attempt I had at getting through to him came up short. Noticeably feeling bad for me, he said, “You want to hear how I got into the army?” “You better believe I do,” I said.

“If you know your history, before the IDF, there were many small forces that were defending the Land of Israel. My father was in one of them. One day, while deployed on a mission, he got shot. He didn’t want to go to the hospital, out of fear that he would expose his unit. He therefore decided to go home. Now you can imagine what happened then. My mother broke down. But with no choice, we pulled aside bedsheets and curtains to wrap him up to stop the bleeding, as I went down the block and called over a neighborhood doctor. We ended up making a makeshift hospital room in the middle of our home.

I was panicking, but I realized that my father was going to survive. For the next few days, I stayed home to take care of him. One night, I was walking near his room, and he called me over. As I took a seat, he looked at me. “It’s time.” “Time for what?” I said. “Time for you to be a man.”

“Time for me to be a man? I’m eleven years old.” My father slowly said, “It’s time… It’s time for you to be a man.” I looked back at my father, after it hit me. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No way.

You can’t go. I need you. We can’t survive without you. I’m not ready to be a man. You can’t leave us.” My father looked at me and said slower, “It’s… time… for you to be a man… You can do it…”

But I was not ready.

My father was not a religious man, but he was knowledgeable about the Torah. “You think Avraham was ready? You think Yosef was ready? What about Moshe and Dovid? Do you think people are ready when the time comes for them? You don’t have to be able or ready; you just have to be willing.”

If you are willing to do something you cannot do, you need to believe that Hashem can give you the strength.

And with that, the Intelligence Officer concluded. “Every day I am in the army, I think that even if I can’t, if I try, G-d will give me the strength to do the things I think I can’t do.”

In life, when you are willing to do something you think you can’t do, G-d can make you be anything. Even if you don’t know how it will work out, you can do something when you are willing. It all comes down to grit and will.

That is how the underdog is victorious. Not because of ability, but because of willingness.

Based upon a lecture by Mr. Charlie Harary

By Elan Perchik

Editorial Director of TorahAnytime.com

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Mr. Charlie Harary, Esq. is a prolific speaker who has traveled all over the country and abroad speaking for organizations, schools, universities and institutions on a variety of topics and to audiences of various sizes and affiliations. He has created dozens of videos that have received worldwide attention reaching hundreds of thousands of people in over 15 countries.